Another Jim Kegley column for Debbie's "The Scioto Voice" Thx Jim ... I liked all of the Thomas' and was likewise called "Boomer" by him..

Debbie,

  My column

    Jim

 

 

Dave Gannon and I spent a couple of hours together a few days before the recent bout of cold, snow, sleet and rain.  I was on my way west on Rte. 52 one day to have lunch and visit my friend, Jack Lewis at the Shawnee Dairy Bar, one-mile east of Buena Vista.  Dave lives on Burt's Lane, in a house he recently bought and re-modeled, and which he rented at an earlier time, back when we both resided on Burt's Lane.  Dave gave me a tour of his new digs, which are really nice.  I asked Dave to accompany me, and we headed off to Jack's place. 

     I have mentioned my friends the Earl Minch family of Portsmouth, and specifically, Val Minch, who lives in Hickory, NC., and is in the international hardwood lumber brokerage business.  He sells all over the world, from his above-the-garage office adjacent to his home.  Dave told me that his family had ties to the Minch family, because, Dave's father's sister, Mary was married to Adolph "Tommy" Thomas, who was a long-time refrigeration repairman for the Earl Minch Refrigeration repair company.  I was interested because I considered the Thomas' to be personal friends of my family, and my Dad, Forest, was also a refrigeration repairman, when he was not "on the road" working as a brakeman/conductor for the N & W.  Tommy and Mary lived just up the street from us, on McConnell Avenue, Portsmouth.

     Tommy Thomas was a great story teller, and loved to tease us with his fantastic stories, which usually centered around guns.  Tommy was a well-known amateur gunsmith.  Val tells this story about Tommy: "We were in my Dad's old blue service-truck, Dad was driving, and I was in my pre-teen years, sitting between the two in the front seat.  Tommy noticed me looking at the rock out-cropping which is just across from the old Chabot's truck stop on Damron Hill, on Gallia Street, and he said, 'Did you ever hear the story about the indian who jumped off that cliff with a pair of gum-soled boots on?  Well, when he landed he bounced and bounced, for as long as two days, and we finally had to shoot him to get him to stop!' Tommy told Val.

     Val, was an impressionable kid, and he said, "It was a long-time before I realized the truth!"

     Tommy, used nicknames for everybody, and he started calling me Boom Boom, or Boomer, so I just started calling Tommy, Boom Boom Thomas.  I think he may have called my Dad that because one day, my Dad, and Val's Dad, Earl, drove Val and me over to my uncle Jim Kegley's house, "up on Kinney" outside of Vanceburg, Kentucky.  Uncle Jim wanted them to use a stick of TNT to fish a hole on Kinniconick Creek, which ran through his property.  I can still see those fish floating belly-up on the surface of the creek.

     Fishing with dynamite is illegal in Kentucky, and Ohio.

     That story is why I attribute Tommy calling my Dad and me, "Boomer".

     Dave remembers that one time, when Tommy and Mary lived on Cole Avenue between Vinton and Robinson Streets, Tommy accidentally shot a hole in the wall of their apartment

      Oh, my Dad's sister, Jesse Kegley, was Earl Minch's first wife, and died in the early thirties, before Val's Mother, Virginia, was in the family.